Wow talk about a GREAT news day! First I learn Pete Peters is near
death and now country music is to! Pinch me I must be dreaming this is
simply too good to be true!!

By Ken Tucker
Sat Jan 27, 6:17 AM ET

NASHVILLE (Billboard) - When Los Angeles country music station KZLA
changed format last August, alarms sounded in the country music radio
and record communities.

The nation's No. 2 market joined New York, which has lacked a country
station since 2002, and San Francisco, which bowed out of the country
game in early 2005, as the third among the top five markets with no FM
country outlet. (Two Los Angeles-area AM stations recently switched to
country.)

Among the reasons for the KZLA switch: It's increasingly difficult to
succeed with country radio in a market where Caucasians carry less and
less sway. A 2006 Arbitron report estimated that only 5.4% of country
radio's nationwide audience is Hispanic and 2.3% is black, while 92.3%
of country listeners fall into Arbitron's "other" category (which
includes Caucasians and Pacific Islanders). But in recent years, U.S.
Census figures show, the Hispanic portion of Los Angeles County's
population (which grew to 44.6% in 2000 from 37.8% in 1990) has passed
up the county's non-Hispanic white population (which slipped to 31.1%
of the total in 2000 from 40.8% in 1990).

At the annual Country Radio Seminar, to be held February 28-March 2 in
Nashville, Edison Media Research and industry trade group Country
Radio Broadcasters will present results of a collaborative study of
the relationship of Hispanics with country radio and music. And
meanwhile, with demographics shifting across the United States,
country radio will have to adapt if it hopes to maintain its role as
radio's top format. (As of December 2006 there were 2,047 country
stations in the United States, according to M Street Journal. News/
talk was second with 2,007 stations.)

While most country stations continue to focus on their declining core,
at least one has been more aggressive when it comes to attracting
Hispanic and African-American listeners. Since the former comprise 46%
of the 12-plus demographic and the latter another 20%, Miami might
appear to be a bad place for a country station. But WKIS (Kiss
Country) has aired the format for more than 25 years.

Historically, Arbitron has tended to rank the station No. 1 or No. 2
in the market among non-black/non-Hispanic 25- to 54-year-olds,
according to program director Bob Barnett. But the market's ethnic
composition, Barnett says, weighs heavily on decisions made at WKIS.
"With zero exaggeration, it's a factor that impacts everything we do
in programming, promotions, marketing and sales," he says.

A dwindling white audience makes attracting new listeners a necessity.
"With the ongoing white exodus from South Florida--a near 20% decline
in whites since the 2000 census was implemented--the challenge before
us is to replace relocating white listeners with Hispanic/Latin
listeners," Barnett says.

It's not easy to do. "There appears to be a very vocal bias (and/or)
prejudice that exists in South Florida among whites who feel that the
Hispanics have 'pushed' their culture and language on everyone else,"
Barnett explains. That bias makes it difficult to reach Hispanics
using the WKIS airwaves, he says. "For example, we can't even do
bilingual IDs without significant listener backlash."

The station's marketing efforts are "stealth or street-level, so as
not to anger the loyal core users," Barnett says.

He is also reaching out to the Hispanic audience through music. "We're
attempting to make the music mix more Hispanic-friendly without
disenfranchising the core," he says. "It becomes a very delicate
balancing act.

"The Hispanic listeners have little to no history in the format, so
older songs aren't as popular with Hispanics," he explains. Likewise,
he says, traditional-sounding country is less popular with Hispanic
listeners than the pop leanings of Shania Twain and
Faith Hill.

The good news, according to Barnett, is that Cuban-Americans and many
South American Latins who have relocated to South Florida have a
profile similar to country listeners. "They're very family-oriented,
hardworking, spiritual and patriotic. The themes in country music
aren't foreign to them.

"Now that we're getting into the second and third generations of
Latins, it appears that the assimilation into American culture is
slowly taking place -- as is their interest level in country music."

And what of Nashville's historically lily-white record labels? Might
they add non-white artists to diversify their rosters? "That just
isn't the way it works," Warner Bros. Nashville chief Bill Bennett
says. "If you find someone with real quality music, you don't care
what ethnic background they're from."

Bennett adds, "We have Cowboy Troy and Rick Trevino, but not
because they're ethnic. We have them because they make great songs."

Barnett, not surprisingly, sees things differently. "I think the
degree of difficulty in marketing a black or Hispanic or Latin artist
to country radio may initially be too unfamiliar and too overwhelming
for most on Music Row," he says. "The labels are more likely to choose
the path of least resistance, but there may be an opportunity for a
renegade independent label to take that risk. The potential payoff
could be huge, but obviously not without great challenge."